* Flood Watch to include a portion of southwest Oregon...including the following areas... central Douglas County...eastern Douglas County foothills and Jackson County to includethe the Roseburg... Grants Pass... and Medford to Ashland portionsof the Rogue Valley.

Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent flow of atmospheric moisture and associated with heavy precipitation from the waters adjacent to the Hawaiian Islands and extending to any location along the Pacific coast of North America. A Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river, which is a more general term for such narrow corridors of enhanced water vapor transport at mid-latitudes around the world. Causes and effects:

How the Madden-Julian oscillation can induce a Pineapple Express. A Pineapple Express is driven by a strong, southern branch of the Polar jetstream and is marked by the presence of a surface frontal boundary which is typically either slow or stationary, with waves of low pressure traveling along its axis. Each of these low pressure systems brings enhanced rainfall.

The conditions are often created by the Madden-Julian oscillation, an equatorial rainfall pattern which feeds its moisture into this pattern. They are also present during an El Niño episode.

The composition of moisture-laden air, atmospheric dynamics, and orographic enhancement resulting from the passage of this air over the mountain ranges of the western coast of North America causes some of the most torrential rains to occur in the region. Pineapple Express systems typically generate heavy snowfall in the mountains and Interior Plateau, which often melts rapidly because of the warming effect of the system. After being drained of their moisture, the tropical air masses reach the inland prairies as a Chinook wind or simply "a Chinook", a term which is also synonymous in the Pacific Northwest with the Pineapple Express.[citation needed]California, 1952

The San Francisco Bay Area is another locale along the Pacific Coast which is occasionally affected by a Pineapple Express. When it visits, the heavy, persistent rainfall typically causes flooding of local streams as well as urban flooding. In the decades before about 1980, the local term for a Pineapple Express was "Hawaiian Storm".[2] During the second week of January, 1952, a series of "Hawaiian" storms swept into Northern California, causing widespread flooding around the Bay Area.

The same storms brought a blizzard of heavy, wet snow to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, notoriously stranding the streamliner City of San Francisco on January 13. The greatest flooding in Northern California since the 1800s occurred in 1955 as a result of a series of Hawaiian storms, with the greatest damage in the Sacramento Valley around Yuba City.... [link to en.wikipedia.org]

Quoting: Luisport

Isn't this virtually the same situation that hit NY a month ago? Jet stream mixed with moist gulf air?

Check this map out! Wow, some rain coming in the next few hrs. Click on future on the weatheractive map. If they are not wet enough already, a second or third round is coming. My Dad-n-law lives in Oakland, thank goodness he lives at the top of a hill :) take care everyone out there.

A high surf advisory was issued by the weather service, with swells expected to be 14 to 16 feet along the Northern California coast. In Southern California, high surf was predicted in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

In San Diego, the Ocean Beach Municipal Pier was closed because of big waves and high tides.

Elsewhere in the West, a state of emergency was declared in Reno, Sparks and Washoe County in Nevada due to expected flooding as a storm packing heavy rain and strong winds swept through the area.